Divisions and Disorders in the Church
1 Corinthians 1-4Paul confronts the Corinthian church's factional loyalties by recentering everything on the crucified Christ, whose cross exposes the bankruptcy of human wisdom and status.
New Testament
1 Corinthians
Paul and Sosthenes write from Ephesus around AD 53–55 to the church Paul founded in Corinth, a major port in southern Greece described in Acts 18. Reports from Chloe’s people and questions sent by the Corinthians reveal factions, sexual misconduct, lawsuits, disputes about marriage and idol food, disorder in worship, rivalry over spiritual gifts, and confusion about resurrection. Paul answers these problems by applying the wisdom of Christ crucified to the church’s shared life: believers belong to one body, freedom must serve love, worship must build others up, and bodily resurrection anchors Christian hope. The letter also organizes support for Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.
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Holiness and Discipline in the Church
1 Corinthians 5-11Paul works through a series of urgent pastoral problems — sexual immorality, lawsuits, marriage, idol food, and the Lord's Supper — by showing that the body of Christ, individually and corporately, is called to reflect the holiness of the God who inhabits it.
Worship, Gifts, and Church Order
1 Corinthians 12-14Paul redirects the Corinthians' competitive spirituality by grounding all gifts in one Spirit, inserting love as the only criterion that matters, and ordering corporate worship around the edification of the whole community.
Resurrection Hope in Christ
1 Corinthians 15-16Paul defends the bodily resurrection of the dead by anchoring it in the historically attested resurrection of Christ, showing that without the resurrection neither faith nor ethics nor the Christian mission makes any sense.